Maybe it’s just me or possibly it’s a baby boomer thing, but does anyone else agree there’s something about our culture that dictates we be the best at whatever we try—parenting, our profession, chosen hobbies, etc.? Mediocrity just doesn’t cut it. Imagine then, the pressure to excel if you’ve graduated from an Ivy League school. In Deborah Copaken Kogan’s latest offering, The Red Book, Harvard alumni come together for their 20th reunion, a gathering which portends to be an event to remember.

Published every five years, The Red Book is a much-anticipated volume, updating former Harvard classmates with coveted facts about fellow alumni—mates, offspring, jobs, accomplishments, etc. The book provides not only information, but also a means for comparing oneself to one’s peers. With those facts in hand, graduates arrive at the reunion either solo or with families in tow. Let the games begin.

Oh, John Scalzi, how I love you (~swoons~). Your likeable characters, intricate but uncomplicated plots, your passion for science fiction. . . you COMPLETE me. And your latest offering, Redshirts, does not disappoint. I knew the moment I read the title oh, so many months ago, that the Trekkie in me would melt at the book's first words. I was not mistaken.

Growing up in a military family, Star Trek's flaws were constantly pointed out to me. That preposterous notion that the entire senior staff would be sent time and again on dangerous missions with no one with any real command experience left in charge. I didn't care. Star Trek was cool, like bow ties, fezes, and Stetsons. But I'm ashamed to say I never did notice the disturbingly high mortality rate of the red-shirted junior officer on away missions. It wasn't until years later that I heard the term "redshirt" that it occurred to me, oh yeah, those guys were always toast, weren't they? Still, I never really gave them much thought, save for when I heard someone use the term I could go "Hey, I understood that reference! Yeah, those guys died, like, A LOT, didn't they?"

On Wendy Everly’s 6th birthday, her mother tried to kill her with a butcher knife in Switched, by Amanda Hocking. This was after claiming that little Wendy was a monster and baby murderer...sentiments that didn't win her the Mother of the Year award but landed her in a mental hospital. After that, Wendy and her protective brother, Matt, went to live with their loving Aunt Maggie. Unfortunately, things didn’t get much easier for Wendy. She was kicked out of almost every school she attended, and school administrators and kids alike seemed equally hostile to her. At 17 years of age, Wendy still feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere, and she has difficulty even eating food that most kids seemed to love, like cake and pizza.

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids. You can browse the book matches here.

Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel: "A vivid evocation of prehistory in which an orphaned child finds refuge with a tribe of prehistoric humans who regard her as a deformed oddity rather than as a step up the evolutionary ladder."

If you enjoyed the attention to anthropological detail and history in Clan of the Cave Bear, here are some other titles you may enjoy:

Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Yanan, the headstrong heroine living near Woman Lake in Siberia twenty thousand years ago, recounts her life and her spirit journeys where she takes on the form of an animal. (worldcat.org)

People of the River by Kathleen O'Neal Gear
With the corn crop failing and the Cahokia Chief's lust for tribute growing, a war chief and the warrior woman he loves look to the gods for a sign of hope for their people. (worldcat.org)

This is not because I fell victim to some carnivorous beastie that could only be satisfied with devouring yours truly--though once I was surrounded by a ferocious herd of petting-zoo goats. Rather, I might have understood the importance of eating whatever my parents told me to.

I am a former picky eater. Fruits and vegetables were not my bag, and hot dogs reigned supreme. One time I even threw a stuffed pepper out the window. Fortunately, time has passed, and I began to appreciate the foods that I once avoided. But I know how the little crocodile Achilles feels when he rejects his parents' meal of freshly-picked bananas. "Today, I'd really like to eat a child."

Being a fan of the horror genre can be frustrating--living in a world filled with bad Hollywood remakes of great classics and series more focused on torture and gore then actually scaring anyone. So, when I picked up Ghost Road Blues, by Jonathan Maberry, I hoped it would give me that old school horror fix I’d been craving since my childhood and young adulthood spent watching the horror films of the seventies and eighties, and let’s just say I was not disappointed.

Ghost Road Blues is a story that takes place in the small town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania, which just so happens to have the biggest Halloween celebration in the country. However, things weren’t always this commercial and light in the town which also happens to have a dark past, a serial murderer who ravaged the town before getting brought to justice, in a six-feet-under kind of way. As the festivities roll in for this year’s Halloween, their past is coming back to haunt them, and not all the monsters walking around town are working at the haunted hayride. Now, the citizens of Pine Deep have to work together to stop those trying to resurrect an ancient evil who will finish what he started thirty years ago.

On the surface Gone Girl reads like a whodunit thriller, and it makes a great summer read--but it’s also a literary novel in disguise with its imagery of a landscape of an economic wasteland, the characters’ moral bankruptcy, and its themes of identity and marriage. It’s been the book of the summer for me.

On their fifth anniversary, Nick Dunne comes home, and his wife Amy is gone. The initial crime scene: an open door, the ottoman turned over, broken glass, and the iron left on. Instead of beginning with “boy meets girl,” the plot starts with “boy loses girl.” Detectives arrive and the media circus begins.

Told in alternating he said/she said chapters, we learn the back story of Nick and Amy. Gilliam Flynn throws her readers red herrings with sneaky abandon. I found myself shifting loyalties back and forth from Team Amy to Team Nick and then being horrified and guiltily fascinated with both of them.

Vee Bell has narcolepsy in Slide by Jill Hathaway. Or at least that’s what her family and friends think. Once, Vee tried to tell her father the truth, but he sent her to a shrink who didn’t believe her either. Now she doesn’t even dare tell even her best friend.

Sliding. That’s what Vee thinks of it as. When she gets too tired to fight it, she falls asleep, but doesn’t dream. Instead, she enters other people’s minds. She can hear, smell, taste, and feel everything that they’re experiencing. Sliding only lasts for moments, but it is long enough to exhaust and sometimes scare her. She’s slid into backstabbing friends and teachers behaving badly. As a result, Vee takes constant caffeine pills to stay awake and is always just barely functioning.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley: "There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it's unwise to walk. But there hadn't been any trouble out at the lake for years, and Sunshine just needed a spot where she could be alone with her thoughts. Vampires never entered her mind. Until they found her." (Book summary)

There are lots of lists there to get you started. Some lists I might start with:

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - A series of books featuring Thursday Next, a literary detective, and head of Jurisfiction in an alternate 1980's Britain. The first title in the series is The Eyre Affair.

Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris - A series featuring Harper Connelly. After being struck by lightning, Harper discovers that she can find dead people and can "see" their last moments on earth.

Chloe and the Lion is not about a young girl facing off with a ferocious feline, no matter what the title says. Sure, Chloe's present, saving up her nickels and dimes to ride the merry-go-round. She does, in fact, spin around that ride so many times that she gets dizzy and lost in the nearby woods. It is at that very point that Chloe should meet a lion. Instead, a large, ferocious, winged, burgundy dragon steps out.

Writing a picture book is hard work. You must have a solid story, likable characters, and the right choice of words. What's more, this delicate balance can be completely thrown out of whack by a maverick illustrator who thinks that "a dragon would be cooler."